From the Publisher:
This book explores the meta-heuristics approach called tabu search, which is dramatically changing our ability to solve a hostof problems that stretch over the realms of resource planning,telecommunications, VLSI design, financial analysis, scheduling, spaceplanning, energy distribution, molecular engineering, logistics,pattern classification, flexible manufacturing, waste management,mineral exploration, biomedical analysis, environmental conservationand scores of other problems. The major ideas of tabu search arepresented with examples that show their relevance to multipleapplications. Numerous illustrations and diagrams are used to clarifyprinciples that deserve emphasis, and that have not always been wellunderstood or applied. The book's goal is to provide ''hands-on' knowledge and insight alike, rather than to focus exclusively eitheron computational recipes or on abstract themes. This book is designedto be useful and accessible to researchers and practitioners inmanagement science, industrial engineering, economics, and computerscience. It can appropriately be used as a textbook in a masterscourse or in a doctoral seminar. Because of its emphasis on presentingideas through illustrations and diagrams, and on identifyingassociated practical applications, it can also be used as asupplementary text in upper division undergraduate courses. 

Finally, there are many more applications of tabu search than canpossibly be covered in a single book, and new ones are emerging everyday. The book's goal is to provide a grounding in the essential ideasof tabu search that will allow readers to create successfulapplications of their own. Along with the essentialideas,understanding of advanced issues is provided, enabling researchers togo beyond today's developments and create the methods of tomorrow.

Tabu Search

A unified view of metaheuristics This book provides a complete background on metaheuristics and shows readers how to design and implement efficient algorithms to solve complex optimization problems across a diverse range of applications, from networking and bioinformatics to engineering design, routing, and scheduling. It presents the main design questions for all families of metaheuristics and clearly illustrates how to implement the algorithms under a software framework to reuse both the design and code. Throughout the book, the key search components of metaheuristics are considered as a toolbox for: Designing efficient metaheuristics (e.g. local search, tabu search, simulated annealing, evolutionary algorithms, particle swarm optimization, scatter search, ant colonies, bee colonies, artificial immune systems) for optimization problems Designing efficient metaheuristics for multi-objective optimization problems Designing hybrid, parallel, and distributed metaheuristics Implementing metaheuristics on sequential and parallel machines Using many case studies and treating design and implementation independently, this book gives readers the skills necessary to solve large-scale optimization problems quickly and efficiently. It is a valuable reference for practicing engineers and researchers from diverse areas dealing with optimization or machine learning; and graduate students in computer science, operations research, control, engineering, business and management, and applied mathematics.

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Metaheuristics: From Design to Implementation

Constraint programming is a powerful paradigm for solving combinatorial search problems that draws on a wide range of techniques from artificial intelligence, computer science, databases, programming languages, and operations research. Constraint programming is currently applied with success to many domains, such as scheduling, planning, vehicle routing, configuration, networks, and bioinformatics.

The aim of this handbook is to capture the full breadth and depth of the constraint programming field and to be encyclopedic in its scope and coverage. While there are several excellent books on constraint programming, such books necessarily focus on the main notions and techniques and cannot cover also extensions, applications, and languages. The handbook gives a reasonably complete coverage of all these lines of work, based on constraint programming, so that a reader can have a rather precise idea of the whole field and its potential. Of course each line of work is dealt with in a survey-like style, where some details may be neglected in favor of coverage. However, the extensive bibliography of each chapter will help the interested readers to find suitable sources for the missing details. Each chapter of the handbook is intended to be a self-contained survey of a topic, and is written by one or more authors who are leading researchers in the area.

The intended audience of the handbook is researchers, graduate students, higher-year undergraduates and practitioners who wish to learn about the state-of-the-art in constraint programming. No prior knowledge about the field is necessary to be able to read the chapters and gather useful knowledge. Researchers from other fields should find in this handbook an effective way to learn about constraint programming and to possibly use some of the constraint programming concepts and techniques in their work, thus providing a means for a fruitful cross-fertilization among different research areas.

The handbook is organized in two parts. The first part covers the basic foundations of constraint programming, including the history, the notion of constraint propagation, basic search methods, global constraints, tractability and computational complexity, and important issues in modeling a problem as a constraint problem. The second part covers constraint languages and solver, several useful extensions to the basic framework (such as interval constraints, structured domains, and distributed CSPs), and successful application areas for constraint programming.

- Covers the whole field of constraint programming
- Survey-style chapters
- Five chapters on applications

Table of Contents

Foreword (Ugo Montanari) 
Part I : Foundations
Chapter 1. Introduction (Francesca Rossi, Peter van Beek, Toby Walsh) 
Chapter 2. Constraint Satisfaction: An Emerging Paradigm (Eugene C. Freuder, Alan K. Mackworth) 
Chapter 3. Constraint Propagation (Christian Bessiere) 
Chapter 4. Backtracking Search Algorithms (Peter van Beek) 
Chapter 5. Local Search Methods (Holger H. Hoos, Edward Tsang) 
Chapter 6. Global Constraints (Willem-Jan van Hoeve, Irit Katriel)
Chapter 7. Tractable Structures for CSPs (Rina Dechter)
Chapter 8. The Complexity of Constraint Languages
(David Cohen, Peter Jeavons) 
Chapter 9. Soft Constraints (Pedro Meseguer, Francesca Rossi, Thomas Schiex) 
Chapter 10. Symmetry in Constraint Programming
(Ian P. Gent, Karen E. Petrie, Jean-Francois Puget)
Chapter 11. Modelling (Barbara M. Smith) 
Part II : Extensions, Languages, and Applications

Chapter 12. Constraint Logic Programming (Kim Marriott, Peter J. Stuckey, Mark Wallace) 
Chapter 13. Constraints in Procedural and Concurrent Languages (Thom Fruehwirth, Laurent Michel, Christian Schulte)
Chapter 14. Finite Domain Constraint Programming Systems (Christian Schulte, Mats Carlsson) 
Chapter 15. Operations Research Methods in Constraint Programming (John Hooker) 
Chapter 16. Continuous and Interval Constraints(Frederic Benhamou, Laurent Granvilliers) 
Chapter 17. Constraints over Structured Domains
(Carmen Gervet) 
Chapter 18. Randomness and Structure (Carla Gomes, Toby Walsh)
Chapter 19. Temporal CSPs (Manolis Koubarakis)
Chapter 20. Distributed Constraint Programming
(Boi Faltings) 
Chapter 21. Uncertainty and Change (Kenneth N. Brown, Ian Miguel)
Chapter 22. Constraint-Based Scheduling and Planning
(Philippe Baptiste, Philippe Laborie, Claude Le Pape, Wim Nuijten)
Chapter 23. Vehicle Routing (Philip Kilby, Paul Shaw) 
Chapter 24. Configuration (Ulrich Junker)
Chapter 25. Constraint Applications in Networks
(Helmut Simonis)
Chapter 26. Bioinformatics and Constraints (Rolf Backofen, David Gilbert)

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Handbook of Constraint Programming

This paper is devoted to bilevel optimization, a branch of mathematical programming of both practical and theoretical interest. Starting with a simple example, we proceed towards a general formulation. We then present fields of application, focus on solution approaches, and make the connection with MPECs (Mathematical Programs with Equilibrium Constraints).

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An overview of bilevel optimization

https://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~ferland/Seminars/Local_search/Pisinger,Ropke_ALNS_2007.pdf

A general heuristic for vehicle routing problems

Classical and modern heuristics for the vehicle routing problem

Ambulance location and relocation models

Several of the most important classical and modern heuristics for the vehicle routing problem are summarized and compared using four criteria: accuracy, speed, simplicity and flexibility. Computational results are reported.

A guide to vehicle routing heuristics

This article traces the evolution of ambulance location and relocation models proposed over the past 30 years. The models are classified in two main categories. Deterministic models are used at the planning stage and ignore stochastic considerations regarding the availability of ambulances. Probabilistic models reflect the fact that ambulances operate as servers in a queueing system and cannot always answer a call. In addition, dynamic models have been developed to repeatedly relocate ambulances throughout the day. 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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Frédéric Semet

Papers

Classical and modern heuristics for the vehicle routing problem

Classical and modern heuristics for the vehicle routing problem

Ambulance location and relocation models

A guide to vehicle routing heuristics

Ambulance Location and Relocation Models